


Not a Guardian Angel and Much Less a God

by Quanna



Category: Doctor Who, Doctor Who (Big Finish Audio)
Genre: Blood and Injury, Gen, Pretentious Language, Time War Angst, violent imagery
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-06-04
Updated: 2015-06-04
Packaged: 2018-04-02 18:15:02
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 613
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4069744
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Quanna/pseuds/Quanna
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>A fire’s building amongst the city’s towers, flames licking up to the sky in a brilliant orange. A breeze picks up, making the metallic stench of human blood flare up around him. It’s unbearable even out here, miles from the civilisation it belongs to. His nails dig into his skin and he closes his eyes to block it out.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Not a Guardian Angel and Much Less a God

**Author's Note:**

> I had this image of Eight watching a city burn in the distance, and then I drabbled this. It's not in any way a finished story, more like a snapshot of something. Unbetaed and written in a few hours, you've been warned.
> 
> I imagine this somewhere between To The Death and Dark Eyes I, but it doesn't contain spoilers for either. You just need to know that Eight is in a pretty bad shape mentally after the events of the former. 
> 
> Content warnings for violent imagery, mentions of blood, thirst and death. There's nothing explicit in here, but the entire thing is coated in sadness as usual, because I can't write happy things.

He will never get used to the smell of human blood. It’s smeared across his face and has dried in his short curling hair. Clings to him now as he climbs the hill, dirty boots showering the amber-coloured grass with ochre dust. 

He’d crash-landed in the final days of their home-made-war, his beautiful box intrigued by the odd readings coming from the planet. She’d been the only blue thing in a sea of reds and browns, and that’d made humans suspicious, even though he’d offered to take them all away and ask asylum on their behalf; he had some connections and favours standing across the universe and he could help them. But people are people, and they’d forced him through the ruins of their city instead, insisting he fix their water supply because isn’t that what guardian angels do who fall from the sky in a wash of blue? 

He’d spent a day explaining it wouldn’t do any good, their world succumbed to the infection ages ago; keeping it on the morphine would only prolong its agony, make it harder to pull the plug when they needed to. And they needed to, but their thirst for survival, for life, that instinct which had brought them here in the first place, that was strong. They had come to this world astray, and made it their own, didn’t he understand they didn’t want to go back to that humiliation of not belonging? He did, of course he did. 

He’s not a guardian angel and much less a god, but he spent another day trying to convince himself he could save these people nonetheless. 

The day they’d found their dwindling water-supplies evaporated to a few drops some of them changed their minds. Begged him in quiet, thirst-cracked voices if he could whisk them away after all, anywhere would do as long as it wasn’t here. Rescue turned into salvation.

He hates it, hates the way they keep twisting and turning when time is running out. Mostly he revels in their unpredictability, loves not being able to read them and watches the universe through their eyes. But times like this, it unsettles him. Their conflicting emotions, their neverending pride. It goes too fast for him to pick up on and process, like he’s mopping the floor with the tab wide open. 

He reaches the top of the hill and stands overlooking a dying world, the sky a deep crimson above him. He's never felt more of an outcast than now, his double heartbeat echoing through his veins as he watches the human city crumble in the distance, yellowed buildings a deceptively beautiful gold in the sunlight. He should be there, should be dragging survivors into his impossible ship to save someone, anyone. But he’s lost this battle, and he’s sick of war, tired of fighting. 

A fire’s building amongst the city’s towers, flames licking up to the sky in a brilliant orange. A breeze picks up, making the metallic stench of human blood flare up around him. It’s unbearable even out here, miles from the civilisation it belongs to. His nails dig into his skin and he closes his eyes to block it out.  
The breeze grows stronger, tugging at his jacket. It’s familiar in a way he cannot yet describe. He opens his eyes, watches one of the towers in the city sink to the ground in a sigh of dust, and he knows with absolute certainty he will see this again. The same colours smeared violently across the landscape, twin suns shining on silver leaves. The ruins of the citadel in the distance, blood of those he failed to save coating him like grotesque warpaint.

**Author's Note:**

> so much pretentious language, I apologise.


End file.
